By Rachel Reed
If you grew up in church, the tune is all too familiar, but unfortunately, the message is pretty vague. It doesn’t give an adequate explanation of “what could be seen”.
You may be a very proactive parent, guarding every movie, every device, every internet blocker...but what about the times they are not at your side? Maybe they’ll be at a friends house or at school and another child shows them something on their device, or a magazine.
What then?
It’s impossible to keep them from seeing billboards, magazine racks at grocery stores, or commercial ads for an upcoming movie. Impossible. We come from a generation that didn’t talk enough about the dangers of pornography, but then also kept marital sex completely behind closed doors. Both have been harmful.
We can’t leave little children on their own to try and put together the pieces of sex in their innocent minds, because they’ll stumble upon the broken pieces of an entirely different puzzle...Satan will make sure of that.
1. Tell your kids what porn is.
2. Tell them that it may make them feel good to watch it (they need to know that...because God’s design for sex is pleasure).
3. But teach them that it is Satan’s way of pulling them into a sin addiction.
4. Teach them what sex involves. Talk to them about masturbation. (If strangers can teach children in schools, why can’t we be open about it as parents?)
5. Talk about sex and God’s design for it. Tell them it is beautiful to God and amazing in a marriage. Let them see you kiss and hug. It’s a small window for them to view sex in a healthy way.
6. Be open to answer crazy, bizarre and hilarious questions! Then answer them casually, as if the most normal thing in the world!
7. Ask your children if they’ve seen anything sexual in a book, on a commercial, on a friends device, or on a movie. Ask them often. Be specific. If they have, talk about it. Thank them for trusting you with their thoughts. Tell them about things you have seen or experienced that would relate with them. Relating with children is so healthy.
8. Assure them that they are not at fault for the things they see(temptation), but dwelling on and looking for more becomes sin. (This is important that they not have guilt from seeing something. Guilt and conviction of sin are two very different things and often confused.)
9. As a parent, live above this. Don’t watch movies with pornographic images in them. Don’t read novels that stir up your thought life in the wrong way.
I recently read a book with a testimony of a pastor’s wife who had struggled in this area for many years as a young adult and even into her marriage. She grew up in a very protective home, but was lured into it from one encounter outside her home.
God can always give the victory, but just like any addiction, it can take over the mind and keep you in bondage for years. It only hinders you from living free in Christ.
I too, have seen victory in this in my own life and I’m so thankful for it. God is so good.
I speak from a heart that wants to protect, but more than protecting and shielding, we need to teach our children how to recognize Satan’s traps of pleasure, then defend themselves. They need to know God’s pleasure far outweighs it.
“How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights!
I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” Songs 7:6, 10
“Marriage is to be honored among everyone, and the bed undefiled. But God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.”Hebrews 13:4
“Drink waters out of your own cistern, and running waters out of your own well. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be only your own, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her be as the loving deer and pleasant doe; let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love. Why should you, my son, be intoxicated by an immoral woman, and embrace the bosom of a seductress? For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his goings. His own iniquities entrap the wicked himself, and he is snared in the cords of his sins. He will die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he will go astray.” Proverbs 5:15-23
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